


First and Last

by Feynite



Series: Looking Glass Kid!Fic AU's [5]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, Original Characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 13:27:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feynite/pseuds/Feynite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Current hosting ground of all my lavalas (Lavellan/Elalas) prompt fills and fics from tumblr!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dreams

The first time Elalas glimpses any part of Mana’Din’s face, it is at dinner.

Elalas sits at the high table, and hates every minute of it. It is too strange. Too different. She had only begun to get used to these dining halls in the first place, to taking her meals and carrying them off to some quiet corner, as many people do. Eating with habitual haste and silence.

Sitting in the clamour of the hall, forced to stay put by the expectations of her latest ascent through the ranks, is… difficult. There are too many people. Too many voices. Too much going on. She wants to grab her plate and run. Or even just run; her apatite has fled her completely. But she thinks that might come across as a weakness.

She is not terribly popular with many of the other high-ranking elves. Not as unpopular as she supposed she would be. Most of them have treated her with courtesy enough, come to it. But there are still those who eye with obvious disdain. Who speak of her _roots._ Who argue her every point in the ‘meetings’, where Mana’Din invites her opinion for reasons she can scarcely fathom.

Few of Elalas’ suggestions have been popular. She doubts many of them will be implemented.

Her discomfort is badly disguised, and she looks over to see if her supposed patron in all of this mess has noticed.

And then she stills, because Mana’Din’s mask is open.

Towards the bottom, where Elalas has become accustomed to seeing only a blank, carved, unmoving mouth, there is now an opening. The mask halts at the end of Mana’Din’s nose, and beneath the edge of it there is now plain flesh. Lips. Teeth. A chin. Elalas has always _known_ there was simply a face beneath the façade, and likely a pretty one. But actually _seeing_ it is another matter, it seems. She cannot help but stare for a long moment, as Mana’Din’s lips part around her fork, and her tongue licks the corner of her mouth.

As she turns, and looks to Elalas; and her mouth twitches into a small, worried frown.

“Are you alright, Elalas?” Mana’Din asks.

Elalas snaps her gaze away from her face.

“Fine, _my lady,”_ she replies, and manages to inject as much derision into the title as possible.

It earns her some annoyed glances around the table. But Mana’Din herself only nods in acceptance, still frowning just a bit, and then resumes the conversation she had been having with one of Dirthamen’s delegates. Who are, of course, replete through her territory. Though they at least tend to be better behaved than Elgar’nan or Mythal’s people, Elalas dislikes their presence in this situation even more than the situation itself.

She decides it is because _one_ misbegotten ‘leader of the people’ is bad enough to deal with. The older models are even worse. They have had time to settle into their corruption, after all. To make a real art form of it. Mana’Din, at least, is inexperienced enough that the rest of the world can get by.

Shaking the thoughts from her head, she manages to focus on eating. Swallowing down a few more bites of food, until the first high-ranking elf leaves the table. That lets her be the second, and that is better, she thinks. Less noticeable.

There are messages for her in the gate room. Some coded, some not. One of her contacts by the stables gives her another to add to the pile. She goes through the ‘official’ news first. Census reports and inventories, complaints from various settlements, from their leaders and representatives and from members of the general populace, too. There is a situation surrounding an uprooted Spirit Vault that might make for a decent mine, that she has been hesitant to forward the reports on because it _is_ a good opportunity but getting anything functional in a hurry is probably going to require blood.

Elalas is not eager to volunteer anybody for any chopping blocks. So far things have been good on that front. Mana’Din does not have bodies to spare. But it cannot last.

She worries over how to bury the matter for another month, or year. The head of the settlement near to the vault is getting impatient. The opportunity to make life in that village a little more comfortable holds more appeal to the people in charge, it seems, than keeping everyone under their leadership alive and well.

When she finally goes to bed that night, there is a knot between her shoulders from too much time spent bent over her desk. Her muscles are not used to straining that way, and she knows she holds herself awkwardly at it; forgetting what one hand is doing while she writes, or leaning too heavily on the other. Spending too much time peering at things from awkward angles. Forgetting there is an actual chair she can sit in.

Her bed is firm. Still, it has taken her years to be able to sleep in any bed at all. She cannot abide by the wealth of cushions and blankets that some of these elves seem to favour.

The luxury she grasps for, though, is the map of stars that spreads in beautiful reflection of the evening sky across her ceiling. That one, she took. That one, she could not resist.

She watches the clouds drift across the moon’s broad face as she lays back and abandons the waking world for sleep.

On the fringes of her dreams, she passes by the pieces of memories. The camp. The desert. The forest, and mountains. Meadows and tangled groves and camps from her childhood. Lakes and rivers. And then the camp again, and she spends some time toiling, before that scenery shifts and she finds herself back in her bed chambers again. Lying on her bed again.

The moonlight is brighter than it should be. The ceiling is not a ceiling at all, it seems, but an opening to the actual sky. So close it feels as if she might reach out and pluck the stars from the fabric of it, like diamonds.

She stares at it for a moment, and even reaches up to trail her fingers through the mist of the clouds.

A chuckle rings through the air.

She looks over, and sees a figure leaning in her doorway. Mana’Din.

Mana’Din in her half mask, with her mouth visible and smiling. In flowing, fluttery white robes, that trail without the hard edges of the armour. She stares in the sort of distant surprise of dreams, at the exposed skin of the other woman’s arms and legs. The delicate beads that drape over the tops of her thighs and the low ‘v’ of her dress, which is… uncharacteristically sparse.

“My lady?” Elalas asks. And the title does not sound like it usually does. Does not lay like it usually does on her tongue, either. There is no heaviness to it. It feels light. Almost playful, like when her nanae would call her mother such things.

Mana’Din is silent for a moment. Lips curving into a soft, secretive smile. But then she pushes away from the wall. Heads towards the bed, and leans down, and presses a gentle kiss to the corner of Elalas’ mouth.

Her breath stops.

The moonlight frames the leader as she strokes Elalas’ face, and then kisses her full-on. Soft and tender, as if Elalas is made from spun glass. The sweetest, honeyed kiss she has tasted in dreams or out of them since… she cannot even recall. It has been too long. But it is lovely. Enchanting, and enchanted.

At first.

At first it is such a shockingly considerate, reverent sort of touch, that it is all she can do to accept it. To lay there in the dream, her mind blank against the implications, and simply be kissed with softness.

But then Mana’Din pulls back a little, and there is a dark glint in her gaze. Her hands close over Elalas’ wrists, hard and fierce as manacles. Cold. Black, spider veins spread across the surface of her mask. Spilling out from the markings on its brow. Bleeding outwards until every inch of white has gone pitch black instead, and Mana’Din’s eyes are pools of fire.

The bed at Elalas’ back is no longer a bed at all. But the framework of a sacrificial altar. And she is tied to it, chained, as the moon turns to a scorching sun, and illuminates a field full of graves.

“Thank you for your service,” Mana’Din tells her.

“No,” she begs. “No, please. Please not this. Please.” She shakes her head, but it can scarcely move. The monster takes her hands back, but it does not free her. The stone of the altar itself seems to be swallowing her whole. Rising up in harsh spikes that split the skin at her back, and begin to slowly saw into her torso. Her neck. Her limbs.

“Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

She screams.

She wakes up, in the still darkness of her room. Panting. Frozen in place, and for a moment she is terrified that she will never move again. Strange shadows seem to loom in the light from her ceiling. Everything feels _wrong,_ feels unsafe and exposed and too vast, too dark.

But then she wrenches herself sideways, and topples off of the bed. Her palms and knees smack against the floor. She heaves, not quite vomiting, but close to it. The close surface against her skin has a grounding effect. It lets her take a minute, to blink back the darkness in her vision. To remember where she is, and realize what has happened.

She grabs the blanket off of her bed, and crawls under it.

Dawn finds her as a huddle ball wedged between her bedposts and the wall.


	2. Tears

After the first time Elalas bursts in on Mana’Din to find the other woman sprawled on top of her bedsheets like some… not actually like a seductive puppet, of course, she did not _really_ say that out loud… like some very strange person who sleeps in armour and a mask, she cannot stop thinking of it.

Specifically, she cannot stop wondering about Mana’Din’s _actual_ sleeping habits.

Because surely the woman does not sleep like that. Who could? She is an elf, in the end. Just another elf, not a goddess, and even if she sleeps sparsely, she must still do it. In her bed, one would assume. Under the covers, not over them. With her mask off. With her clothes off.

Some of her clothes off.

Not… probably not _all_ of her clothes off.

Though at the thought, Elalas cannot quite keep herself from picturing Mana’Din lying in her bed. With only a flimsy, sheer sheet over top of her, leaving precisely nothing to the imagination as she rests her arms atop her pillows, and raises one knee, sighing as if she is waiting for some tragically negligent lover to come and…

…And definitely not follow that line of thought any further. No.

…No.

That is not the likeliest sleeping arrangement for someone who is routinely beset upon by assassins anyway, Elalas is forced to admit. So perhaps she _does_ sleep in armour. Lightly. On top of the covers, ready to defend herself at a moment’s notice. Never really relaxed or comfortable or at peace.

She feels a pang of empathy at the thought.

Or maybe she sleeps just fine, really. That is possible too. Maybe she curls under her covers and snores and dreams soundly, secure in the knowledge that even if someone _does_ attack, they will likely fail. That she is, in her way, safer than nearly anyone else in the world, not matter who should get it into their head to kill her. Perhaps she lounges among her pillows, and contemplates her ‘good deeds’ in being so tolerant and charitable towards the riff-raff she has taken in under her banner.

There are some would-be assassins she suspects she could ask. _What did Mana’Din look like when you happened upon her sleeping? Comfortable? Restless?_

_Nude?_

The helpful image of Mana’Din in nude repose decides to return, complete with soft sighs and a hand slipping underneath the sheet this time. Caressing her own breast as it slips down, down her stomach, and abdomen, and Elalas stops right there because she is walking through the corridors and the last thing she needs is some stray sign of lust or arousal sprinting off into the air and giving everyone some funny ideas about her thoughts on field reports and/or window trimmings.

Which are really the only visible motivators around.

Damn imagination.

Damn Mana’Din, who had to go and – and _lounge_. On her bed. In her room. With the door closed.

…Despot.

Elalas firmly wrangles her thoughts into order, and tells herself off for wandering that far. For one thing, she is probably never going to find out anything further about Mana’Din’s sleeping arrangements. For another, she definitely should not feel at all disappointed at that. And finally, there are far more important things she could be thinking about.

She even manages to do a good job of pretending she is past being preoccupied with this for almost a week.

Then a messenger turns up in the dead of night with an urgent missive for Mana’Din, regarding peacekeeprs coming through one of the southern city gates unannounced, and she all but snatches the report right out of their hands and runs it to Mana’Din’s bedchamber herself.

Because it is vital and urgent.

Not for any other reason, and definitely not because legitimately worrying peacekeeper activity is also a convenient means of satisfying her curiosity.

She knocks at Mana’Din’s chamber door, but of course it is late, and urgent, and she is not expecting an immediate answer; and so she barely grazes it with her knuckles before whispering the words to pacify the intruder alert, and then slipping into the room.

Except that Mana’Din is not asleep.

Elalas stills at the sight of the figure, sitting on the edge of the room’s bed.

Mana’Din is dressed in a simple grey shirt, that trails down over the tops of her hips, and looks soft and well worn. Her shoulders are slumped, and a wet, heavy note of grief lies thick in the air. Thorough enough to make Elalas’ throat close up, as it seems such a good match for the abiding ache that rests behind her own ribs. The starlight is dim, but still good enough for her to see the shaking of Mana’Din’s shoulders. And she can hear, too, the telltale hitching of her breath.

The woman is sitting on her bed, in the dark, weeping.

Elalas’ first thought is that she should turn and slip back out of the room again. That she is not supposed to see this, and that she has done a much worse thing than she had anticipated, by coming in unannounced.

But the missive actually _is_ urgent.

And anyway, she barely has time to consider it before Mana’Din’s breath halts, and she turns, and looks towards her.

The light catches on the wet tracks across her cheeks.

Elalas shifts from one foot to the next. Stares at Mana’Din’s bare, tearstained face, and feels a visceral urge to go and find whoever made her cry and make them cry instead.

“What is it?” Mana’Din asks her.

This is a woman who can project her voice across the whole of her territory, if she so pleased. Elalas has no idea how she can manage to sound so _small_ , then. But she does. Small and brittle, and maybe resigned, too. As if she cries so often at night that this sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later.

“There has been an emergency. Peacekeepers have shown up unannounced at one of the southern city gates,” she explains, dutifully, and makes herself move forward and bring the relevant missive to Mana’Din.

Up close, it is even worse. Up close, it is much easier to feel the deep well of her misery. Up close, Elalas has to clasp her hand into a fist to keep from reaching out to brush it across the other woman’s cheek, to wipe off the tearstains and ask what has made her weep. What has hurt her. What can be done for it, even if it is only, perhaps, to have Elalas close her arms around her for a while.

Not that she imagines that _would_ be the solution.

Mana’Din wipes up her tears of her own volitions anyway, hastily brushing them off of her face, and offering no particular excuse for them as she takes the missive and frowns at it. Gradually, the grief recedes, and the aura around her reverts to something closer to its normal state. Closed-in, quiet, and steady.

“Damn it, Elgar’nan,” Mana’Din breathes, as she quickly goes over the contents of the message. After a moment she stands. “I will have to go, then, or there will be riots by dawn.”

“I will come,” Elalas immediately agrees.

The offer is met with a nod of acknowledgement.

And then a long, awkward pause.

“I should dress,” Mana’Din suggests, not quite meeting her stare.

Elalas opens her mouth, and closes it again.

“Can I do anything?” she blurts.

Mana’Din blinks.

“You are already coming with me.”

“That is not what I meant,” she admits. There is another long, awkward pause. Trembling with some unnameable tension. Elalas thinks that she would like to break it by reaching out and touching Mana’Din; and also that this would be a terrible, _terrible_ idea.

At length, Mana’Din sighs.

“It is too late,” she says. “Help is too late. I already failed them.”

Her eyes shine, starlight in her tears, and then she looks away and moves over to the dressing screen I the room.

Elalas wants to ask who she means. Some long-ago friends who fell into trouble? Some expectation of her family’s that she could not meet? But given the taste of grief she has had, given the weight of it, Elalas can only think that death is the answer.

A great deal of it.

Like the masses Falon’Din slew when war was declared upon him, as retribution for his attempt to assassinate his niece.

Elalas thinks of a woman who would sit awake in the dark, crying over the dead that her kin would sacrifice without a second thought, and does not know how to feel about it.

So finally she turns, and leaves the room.

She has a better idea of how Mana’Din sleeps.

Somehow, she does not think this will help her fixate on the matter any less, though.


	3. Peril

The scouts go missing at the beginning of the month.

Two of them, mapping out a region in the northern parts of the territory. There are a lot of roads in that area that have fallen out of use. Gone into disrepair, as preference fell towards using the eluvian network. Mana’Din has been trying to sort the area out, as part of an on-going project to establish more self-sufficiency for the territory.

Elalas does not get the report herself. It is not her jurisdiction; not yet, at least. Not until enough the project progresses enough for there to be talk of new outposts or assignments. The missing scouts are former slaves, though. That brings her into the discussion, as the organizers handling the reports want to charge them with dereliction of their duties.

Typical. No one even knows what has _happened_ to the pair.

“It is the wilderness,” she argues. “They could have taken a bad route and been delayed. They could have stumbled on one of Falon’Din’s old traps. They could have been cut off by a rockslide, or any number of things. They have been good scouts up until this point.”

“Good scouts? One of them nearly fled the territory once,” the project manager argues.

“And that was nearly a hundred years ago now. They have had a _child_ since then. Times change,” Elalas retorts. She does not know these scouts, but she has papers on them. Notes and reports that fill the files behind her desk, half of which she had memorized by now. Censuses and lists that are constantly updating. She keeps track of people.

Just in case anyone ever tries to make them simply disappear.

And even so.

“We will send a search party,” Mana’Din decides, putting an end to the fruitless argument. “No matter what their reason for missing three check-ins, we will need to find them, first and foremost. Send a healer with a small team. Pull one back from the other scouting missions, if you have to. I would rather sort this out than keep progressing in another direction, for now. If it is another surprise leftover from Falon’Din, it is best we know as soon as possible.”

“And if the scouts have been negligent?” the project manager wonders.

“Then we will make the usual inquiries and, if necessary, take some disciplinary action,” Mana’Din concedes. “But Elalas is right. There are so many potential explanations, I would rather not jump to accusations just yet.”

The manager subsides, at that. Finally accepting reason, or at least bending to it.

Discussion turns to other matters, and Elalas puts the issue aside as something to keep an eye on as further information becomes available. On the off-chance there _is_ some sort of dereliction going on, she will need to do her best to keep the axe from falling too heavily on the matter. The scout whose loyalties had been called into question, she thinks, is unlikely to be much of a real issue; but their partner has struggled to recover from some of their traumas. If it is anything at all to do with the pair’s own behaviour, she would bet her bonus acquisition credits that a meltdown of some kind is the culprit instead.

It is not until several weeks later, when the rescue party also fails to report in, that it becomes clear that something else is going on.

“I will investigate this myself,” Mana’Din decides.

Elalas stares at her, and scowls. As if there are not already plenty of dangers which choose to target this woman within her own lands. At the first sign of trouble, of course – of _course_ – she personally has to go running headlong towards it. Never mind that they are all well and truly doomed if she gets herself killed. Oh no. Of course the conceit of one of her sort is so high that she thinks herself nigh invulnerable.

“That is a terrible idea,” Elalas says.

And for once, most everyone around the meeting table agrees with her. Generally, when that happens, Mana’Din acquiesces to the rare consensus with little fuss.

But of course, not this time.

“We have seven people missing, currently. That is seven more than we can afford to lose. I am not sending another rescue party just to add to that number,” Mana’Din declares. “Something is going on, and it is bigger than the trained elves we have already sent can handle. That calls for my presence.”

“There are better choices,” one of the other advisors argues. “We have  promises from Andruil to commit her people to any incidents of beasts or monstrous foes. This is the wilderness. Some feral dragon or pack of stormchasers could be behind this as surely as anything. Why not see if your Lady Aunt will spare some of her own experts to this cause?”

Elalas’ expression twists. She almost likes that idea even less. Inviting hunters into their territory feels an awful lot like dropping jungle cats into a field full of livestock.

“Because we do not _know_ that it is a beast,” Mana’Din says. “And if my Lady Aunt’s experts go missing, and are not found in the belly of some suitable monster, that will prove even more costly to us in terms of reparations.”

“What of your grandmother’s people? Mythal’s scouts are known to be efficient,” another advisor argues.

“Seven people, Advisor. Seven of _our_ people, are missing. They have been missing for almost a month. They could be hurt. They could be trapped. They could be starving. They could be dead. We can argue all we like, but the moment that report came in, the path was clear. I am going,” Mana’Din insists.

When the meeting draws to a halt, Elalas follows her out of the chamber.

“Would you stop being an egotistical fool and think for a moment?” she demands. “You are not expendable!”

Mana’Din halts.

The arched windows that line the hall look out towards the gleaming surface of the nearby lake. It had been little more than a barren pit when Elalas had first seen this place. Dry and drained, to make way from some asinine project of Falon’Din’s which no one had even been able to properly divine the intention of.

Now it is a lake again. With green things growing around it, and houses and workshops arrayed around the banks of it. Waterfowl gliding across the surface. Spirits flitting above the center, dancing and playing in the passing breeze.

“No one here is expendable,” Mana’Din tells her. “We send experts to do the jobs that need to be done. Right now, what we have here is a mystery. And I am the daughter of Dirthamen. There is no expert more qualified for it.”

But if Mana’Din dies, Elalas thinks, all the water will be gone from that lake again. All the good she has managed to do will be undone, by those less scrupulous.

“What if I go?” she suggests. She is a more than fair scout herself, after all. And more cautious than most. She knows people who could be well trusted to accompany her at such a task.

“If you go then there is no chance at all of my not going,” Mana’Din tells her. There is a rueful note to her voice that makes Elalas think she is smiling that way, behind her mask.

She straightens.

“Then I would say the same to you,” she insists. “If you are going, you are _not_ going alone. I will not have your conceit crippling us. If you go missing out in the wilderness, we will have peacekeepers crawling over the territory within a fortnight, and hunters, and any number of your ill-tempered relations.”

“Well, we cannot have that,” Mana’Din agrees. “Though I would rather you stayed. If things go wrong, I trust you to at least get as many people out as you can manage.”

And to what end, Elalas wonders? Fleeing to the holdout encampments, just to wait for the remainder of Mana’Din’s tyrannical kin to muster enough of their forces to wipe those out, too?

“I am coming along,” she insists.

Someone has to watch this fool woman’s hide, come to it.

~

The northern swath of the territory is a mess.

Mana’Din had known that, of course, but she had not been able to see it firsthand before. They set out for the furthest settlement on the eluvian network, and then head on down fairly decent roads to the outlying villages. Some remote farms, that peter off into tiny clusters the subsist more off of hunting and foraging. The tangle of wilderness is pleasant enough at first. Elalas is not surprised by the multitude of grave markers. Nor by the banners that drift over some of the villagers; multi-coloured and written in old clan names and shrine symbols. Most of the elves living here come from the camps.

If Mana’Din objects to the implied rebellion behind them, she makes no comment nor issue of it. Though one or two of her accompanying guard do look askance at them.

Elalas is not worried, though. She made no note of Mana’Din’s excursion to any of her contacts in the rebellion, and if the locals had anything planned, they likely would have taken the banners _down._ Whatever disdainful opinions the more ‘civilized’ elves might hold towards her compatriots, they are not generally so foolish as to advertise themselves before they act.

Mana’Din keeps to herself, anyway, and leaves most of the questioning of the local populace to Elalas. Not that they do much of it. The settlements are still miles and miles off from where the scouts and their rescue party vanish. One of the local woodcutters confirms that the rescue party left from the region, and has not been seen again since. But that is about it. They might be more at one of the outposts, she supposes.

It is only once they really depart from the edges of settled territory that the condition of the _unsettled_ territory becomes clear.

The earth turns from forest soil to rocky terrain, and then to a parched, craggy wasteland. Mountains rise up in sheer, perilous towers, fraught with odd radiant energy. It sends boulders tumbling in unnerving overhead loops, and has sand and dust and pebbles spraying from the ground in sharp reverse rains. The air is fetid, and the wind stale, and sky looks wrong. The light of it wavers before it touches the ground, turning everything a solid, disconcerting grey.

Mana’Din stares at their surroundings, halting in her tracks.

“No one told me it was like this,” she says, and Elalas feels a chill because she has never heard _that_ tone of voice before. The emotions in her are clutched close, though, and hard to read.

“There were reports,” one of the other scouts ventures. “Instabilities, and anomalies in the Dreaming, and damage to the terrain. It should have all been in there.”

“Yes, but…” Mana’Din pauses, and stares some more.

There is an awkward silence.

It is unpleasant, to be certain, Elalas thinks. But she has read the reports herself, and she knows Mana’Din has, too. This matches them. It is one thing to read about it and another to see it in person, she supposes, but still.

“I did not realize it would look like this,” Mana’Din concludes, at length.

“We should walk carefully,” Elalas advises, trying to carry on from the odd moment. She gestures up to some of the floating boulders. “Any of those instabilities could give out at a moment’s notice.”

Maybe the scouts and their rescue party were all crushed to death.

Tragic, but, seeing the landscape as it is… she would not be surprised.

~

The ‘they were all unfortunately crushed by falling boulders’ theory is put somewhat to the test when they find their first sings of remains. Elven bones scattered amidst the petrified droppings of what must be some large and terrifying beast.

Mana’Din stares at them, and Elalas feels a sinking certainty, then, that they will not be finding anyone alive.

“How far are we from Ghilan’nain’s border?” the leader asks.

Elalas obligingly points out a distant ridge of mountains, ringed by the small blue line of a river.

“Hmm,” is the only reply she gets.

~

Mana’Din does not fight the way Elalas expects her to.

Of course, that she _can_ fight has been well established over the years. But mostly through secondhand accounts and the obvious evidence of her survival and participation in various battles. When she has considered the matter, Elalas has always supposed that Mana’Din would fight primarily with magic. With minimalistic movements, perhaps. Simple, sweeping gestures that summoned great tides of power. Like a conductor directing a symphony of will and magic.

That is… not how it goes.

The beast rears and Elalas heart jumps into her throat. It charges, and she moves, desperate, realizing in a split second that she will be too slow. That she will be caught up in its jaws, and that will be it. That the creature they have stumbled upon is likely responsible for the remains of the scouts and the search party that they discovered, and that she will be joining their number very shortly.

_Wham._

Mana’Din slams, bodily, into the side of the beast’s head. Moving like some ghostly knight as she redirects its charge by way of sheer, immovable force. Her arm gleams with the light of a barrier, but it is not cast remotely, by way of some wave of gesture; it settles in her grasp like a shield. Though she is small when compared to the beast itself, the force with which she hits it is enough to make the air tremble, and to wrench a startled howl from it.

Its jaw cracks.

As Elalas stares, Mana’Din pushes back and draws her blade; and she realizes that whole instant had been purely reactive. In a split second, the other woman had seen her being charged, and her immediately response had been to _fling herself at the monster._

Elalas heart hammers against her ribs.

The guard recall that they are meant to be fighters, then, and begin to act. Spells fly in earnest through the air, but the fight remains clearly Mana’Din’s own. The beast focuses in on her, and she meets it, cleaving through its hide with quick, efficient movements that clearly seek to slit its throat, or impale its eyes. Weak points on most animals; but this creature’s hide is tougher than the edge of Mana’Din’s blade, and ridges on its skull have the sharp point of it skittering away. It snarls and stomps and flicks its massive tail, knocking over Mana’Din’s guard before turning to take another swipe at Elalas.

She remembers herself and her own peril, then, and moves to dash away; only to find a hand grasping her.

Mana’Din’s mask is inscrutable as ever, but the air around her is fairly _crackling_ as she pulls Elalas behind her, and lifts up a barrier the size of a small house. It is enough to make her nerves catch fire and her head swim, and though it is, conveniently, never, ever brought up, and possibly not witnessed by anyone else, she finds herself stumbling to the ground and maybe possibly clutching one of Mana’Din’s legs.

A little

For an instant, and only because the monster charges them and the ground trembles with it, and she is too disoriented to do much besides clutch at Mana’Din and try to help keep her upright.

The beast’s skull _cracks_ against the barrier, sending up a shower of sparks. Its jaws snap and its legs stamp. Its tail thrashes again, before one of the guard recovers, and distracts it with an offensive spell. Bright twists of painful light. Elalas wants to shut her eyes but she knows that is a bad idea, and so she looks down instead, watching the creatures feet as they move. Anticipating its charges, as Mana’Din lets out a curse and steps forward.

Away from her. Towards the danger.

_No, come back!_

Elalas cannot catch the reflexive surge of fear in time, and reaches out, closing a hand over the hem of Mana’Din’s coat.

The other woman glances back at her.

“Stay here,” she says, gently. Reaching over to take her hand, and offer it a reassuring squeeze, before charging back towards the rearing, deadly beast. Elalas’ throat feels dry and her eyes are wide, and she watches Mana’Din’s legs, and the beast’s. Listens to the crash of its skull against another barrier, and blinks against the flashes of spells.

And then Mana’Din is swerving underneath the creature’s low-slung belly, and dragging her blade across the softer skin of its stomach. The air around her sharpens, edged like her blade, magic cutting as surely as forged steel. A tremendous cry of pain breaks through the air. Blood rushes across the parched ground. But it is not enough, she knows. The blade cannot get deep enough and the beast is keeping its footing.

She forces her gaze up. Past the rolling of its eyes and its snapping jaws, past the sight of it nearly crushing Mana’Din, and then halts when she sees the misty sky broken by one of the large, hovering boulders from the nearby mountains.

That, she thinks.

That will do.

She has to make herself wait, though. Wait as Mana’Din struggles with the monster, and its tail crashes into her guard again; smashing their barriers apart, and likely breaking their ribs as they hit the ground with pained cries. Wait as it smacks Mana’Din herself back; as it charges after her.

There.

It passes below the boulder.

Elalas cracks a spell against the instability, and the levitation breaks. Gravity does the rest, dragging the boulder immediately downwards. The beast howls as hard, jagged rock nearly half the size of it lands directly onto the middle of its back; a crushing blow that should break its spine.

It barely slows it down.

Her heart leaps into her throat as the monster carries on with its charge, maw opened wide, and then closes its jaws clean around Mana’Din.

“No!”

She feels an awful, wrenching, cold panic at the sight. At the sound of teeth scraping at pristine armour, and the top of Mana’Din’s form vanishing into the creature’s mouth; its shadow falling over her, and then falling further still, as it seems set upon biting her off at the ankles.

For an instant all Elalas can do is watch in horror, certain that it will snap its neck back and rend Mana’Din between its teeth.

But then an odd, low sound breaks through the air, and the beast keeps collapsing forwards. The muscles of its jaw work, but cannot seem to close. Something is holding them open. Its legs stomp and its tail thrashes, and its eyes roll as blood pours from its mouth. With a tremendous wrench, it finally lifts its head again, and Elalas realizes what has happened; that Mana’Din had stabbed it from the _inside_ of its mouth, and cast a barrier to keep it from closing its jaws. Her sword is little more than a gleaming hilt, the rest of it piercing through the creature’s brain. It flings her wide as it seems to shudder into its death throes, collapsing to its side, twitching and heaving.

Mana’Din his the ground. Blood streaked all across her white clothing. A tooth the size of a dagger protruding from her back.

Elalas rushes to her, keeping one eye on the still-thrashing creature as she grasps Mana’Din by the arms, and begins dragging her further away. Away and away, until the guards finally manage to pick themselves up. Until the beast’s thrashing has no hope of reaching them. She pulls Mana’Din until she can grip her enough to lift her – less than the weight of most of the burdens she has had to carry – and draw her behind one of the jagged stone outcroppings.

“Fuck,” she says. Slick blood tracking down the front of her clothes.

“Is it dead?” Mana’Din asks.

“Fuck if I know,” Elalas replies, but she takes a minute to look; and it does seem to be slowing, she thinks, as the guard cast more barriers around it, and its wild struggles just have it bouncing off of them like the ball in some morbid, grotesque version of a children’s game. She chokes down her nausea, and then grasps Mana’Din tighter when she tries to move away.

“It is dead,” she says, pushing the other woman around so she can see the _dagger-sized tooth_ in her back, instead. It went clean through the armour, she notes. If all of those teeth really had closed around her…

She shudders, and lets out another curse.

“Would you mind pulling that out?” Mana’Din asks her, like it is an irritating splinter and not a _dagger-sized tooth_ from the _rampaging hell-beast_ she just killed.

“If I pull it out you are going to bleed everywhere,” Elalas snaps.

“I will just use healing magic,” Mana’Din replies, patiently, and of course she will. This is not a camp, with its restrictions on self-healing. She really is addled if she can forget that, with one of the lauded Leaders of the People pretty much in her lap.

“Right,” she says, tightly.

Reaching over, she closes both hands as firmly as she can over the base of the tooth, and yanks it out.

Mana’Din hisses, and a rush of blood wells up, soaking into her clothes and spilling through the hole in her armour. For one second Elalas almost panics again. But then a wash of healing magic surges through the air, and the blood slows. The injury closes, bit by bit, until Mana’Din can flex her shoulders, and move well enough to roll over.

She lets out a heavy breath as she does. It echoes oddly in her mask. Elalas fingers itch to take it off her; and she is just about to give in when the guards at last hurry around the outcroppings.

When the first of them tries to take Mana’Din from her, she almost punches him instead.

But she remembers herself, and resists the odd urge. She presses her back against the rock instead, and takes deep, calming breaths as Mana’Din is helped back onto her feet, and it is firmly established that the beast is dead. Elalas closes her eyes. Her blood is so loud in her skull that it feels like thunder at her temples.

A hand falls onto her shoulder.

She blinks, and sees Mana’Din looking at her.

“Wait here. We are going to investigate the corpse, and it will not be pretty,” she says.

Elalas frowns.

“I can handle a corpse. It is a rampaging murder beast that gives me trouble,” she insists, bristling a bit at the implication otherwise.

“I am just saying. You can stay here,” Mana’Din tells her, giving her shoulder a squeeze, before withdrawing her touch. She moves off then, heading back around the outcropping. Elalas gives it another few moments before she peels herself away from the stone, and follows.

“Stay here,” she scoffs to herself. “When you are probably going to climb half way down the thing’s throat to get your sword back, never mind that is has serrated teeth and… yes, there she goes.”

Mana’Din moves into the beast’s open jaws, and sets about yanking her sword free.

“This is definitely one of Ghilan’nain’s!” Mana’Din calls, apparently having discovered some kind of proof in examining the back of its throat. “Excellent!”

“How is this excellent, you mad tyrant?!” Elalas demands, skirting around several massive, steaming pools of blood.

“She will have to pay us reparations!” Mana’Din explains, her tone bordering somewhere between sinister and satisfied.

This woman.

Elalas is going to kill her herself one of these days.


	4. First Kiss

Elalas does not suppose that anyone in the history of the universe has ever had as poor judgement as herself when it comes to infatuations.

She thinks this as she watches Mana’Din dine.

The bottom of the woman’s mask has given way. Opening up to reveal her lips, the gentle curvature of her mouth moving as she eats, and drinks, and speaks. The top of her face is the same neutral, set expression as ever, white and static and still. Painted with the lines of her own chosen markings. The same ones which sit upon Elalas’ brow. But the lower half of her face is warm, living flesh. Far more expressive than the subdued emotional cues or steady speaking tone that the woman generally puts out.

Soft.

Elalas looks away, and ruthlessly reminds herself that she needs to stop _looking._ It is only making matters worse. Mana’Din is one of _them._ Not only a servant of those who destroyed her world, but their very kin. She derives her authority from blood ties to Dirthamen. The man who all but annihilated three entire clans himself. She is the granddaughter of Mythal, who took the name of a goddess, and turned her temple into an opulent palace, and parcelled off the world as slaves and possessions to her misbegotten children.

Elalas scowls at her plate. And then at the high-ranking elf beside her. A once-servant of Falon-Din’s, with a bad habit of making magical displays when he gestures. Nothing so overt as to merit concern for most elves. But it keeps flashing in the corner of her eye. Erratic and distracting and increasingly nauseating, until she feels on the verge of reaching over and slapping him. Or stabbing him with her fork. That might be nice.

It makes her want to click her tongue. Clap. Do something – anything – to get her focus back in front of her, but that sort of display would be even stranger than his own. So after a moments she stands instead, and makes an early retreat from the meal.

That’s wise, she decides. Leave the temptation behind.

Temptation to stab any of her so-called colleagues with forks, of course.

Not… any other sorts of temptation.

She heads down the halls, and after a moment’s deliberation, turns and makes her way towards the baths. At meal time they are not generally too occupied. That makes it a good time to use them, and more convenient than bathing in the dead of night. Mana’Din had offered her a private bathing chamber – had offered most everyone that, in fact – but she had declined it, at the time. Not wanting to take more than was absolutely necessary.

She regrets that decision, to be honest. But she doesn’t dare go back on it, either.

Still, today, luck is with her. The baths are empty. The airy chamber is simple enough – there are three pools. One which can be heated, with a touch of magic. One with treated water for sore muscles, abrasions, and aches which healing magic cannot always cure – she has found that one also helps with insomnia – and one which is simple, cool rinsing water.

She warms the heated pool with a gesture, and after giving it a moment to work, disrobes and climbs in. She lets out a sigh, and clicks her tongue a bit, rakes a hand through the water and just tries to gather her thoughts. Away from  inappropriate preoccupations and annoying colleagues. And how strange is that to think of, truly? That she has _annoying colleagues_ now? That she is sitting in a heated bath, with evening light streaming in through the windows?

She opens her eyes and stares at her body through the surface of the water.

Scars.

The manacle marks on her wrists and ankles, of course. The odd lash scar that decided to remain, just to make a point of itself. The burn mark on her chest, from when she had tried to pull Aravasha off the altar.

The memory of flames licking up her chest bites at her, and suddenly the warm water feels too hot. She scowls, and winces, and lifts her torso a little higher out of the surface of the pool. Into the cooler air above it. After a moment she decides to move to one of the higher benches; but then the sound of footsteps halts her.

She stills, and looks towards the entryway of the baths; and freezes solid when she spies a wholly unexpected wisp of white silk.

Mana’Din walks in.

Elalas holds very very still, as if that might help. As if Mana’Din’s vision might be based on movement. As if she is not the sole person in the baths, and, therefore, the sole person anyone might notice upon entering them.

What is the woman even doing in here?

She has her own private baths.

Elalas knows. Assassins keep trying to hide in them.

“Are you alright?” Mana’Din asks her. A masked ghost standing just within the threshold of the chamber.

Elalas regains her senses just enough to slip lower into the pool, but not, it seems, enough to realize that the pool’s surface is perfectly transparent, and therefore utterly unhelpful at concealing _anything_. She does manage to keep her hands from fluttering and splashing through the water, though.

“What?” she blurts.

Mana’Din’s head tilts a bit, as she seems to take in the scene before her, and yes, that was precisely what Elalas needed, she decides. Scrutiny from the lovely, incredibly ill-advised object of her latest inconvenient infatuations.

“You left in a hurry, and you seemed disquieted. I wanted to make certain you were well,” Mana’Din tells her.

She frowns, as much at the inappropriate bit of warmth that provokes in her as anything.

“Afraid the dining hall was destined for a rebel attack?” she wonders.

But of course, that would be convenient, if only Mana’Din were _actually likely_ to leave a dining hall she suspected to be under impending attack. Over the years, however, Elalas has developed a sneaking suspicion that the woman’s fascination with death has manifested in an interest in accelerating her own. She fairly _leaps_ towards danger.

“As if you would not tell me if you knew anyone was planning something that stupid,” Mana’Din replies, and the certainty of her tone grates, just a bit. Because Elalas _would._ Not to betray the rebels, but to keep them all from getting their fool selves killed on some moronic venture that could never accomplish what they want it to anyway. Because that is the truth of it, when it comes down to it. They can rail against this corrupt society and its wicked rulers and she will be right there at the front of it all, the first to snap and snarl, to point out every flaw and failing and moral corruption and betrayal of principles. Betrayal of the very beating heart of the people. But killing Mana’Din just gets them back in the slave camps, right now.

A _lesser evil,_ the woman calls herself.

“I shall leave you to it, then. If you are alright,” Mana’Din says.

 _Yes. Go,_ Elalas thinks.

“They are your baths, my lady. I am certain you may do in them as you please,” is what she says, sharp and resentful. Her baths. Her servant. Her territory, and everyone in it, marked or not, is at her mercy.

The gall of her, Elalas thinks. To have so much, and then to have so much mercy.

For a moment, she is certain the other woman is going to turn and leave. To tilt her head in that way that always feels like she is trying to respectfully acknowledge Elalas as some kind of expert or leader or authority near to her own. Maybe even equal to it. That way that always makes her fingers itch to reach for the straps of her mask again. To look at her face, and look at her eyes, and ask her just what she _is._

But then Mana’Din reaches up and takes her mask off of her own accord.

Elalas stares.

She feels like a stunned bird, or a hypnotized serpent, whenever she sees Mana’Din’s face. And it only gets worse, then, as the leader moves over to the clothing rack, and carefully disrobes. Slipping off her outer layer. Removing the gleaming pieces of her armour. The soft, fluttering fabrics beneath, until all that is left is a naked woman. A naked woman with clear musculature that moves beautifully with her steps. The shapely curve of her calves, of her biceps, catches Elalas gaze so that it will not linger on even less appropriate places, before she remembers how propriety works, and looks at the water instead.

Mana’Din slides into the pool with her.

“Am I to be expected to wash your back?” she wonders, and she hopes that sounds as discouraging as she means, and not eager in any way.

“No,” Mana’Din says. “As if I would presume. And if I did, I would offer to wash yours first.”

Her tone is light. Casual. Not even forced to be so. Elalas finds herself staring at Mana’Din’s hands, before she catches herself again, and most firmly discourages herself from thinking of the feel of them on her skin. Her back. Brushing scented soap over her. She cannot remember the last time someone else washed her back. Properly; not with some cold spray at a distance.

“Do the displays at dinner distress you?” Mana’Din asks her, after a moment. Laying the topic of washing aside.

It takes her a moment to catch the other woman’s meaning.

“Why should they?” she wonders, stiffening a bit.

“Because you do not like them,” Mana’Din supposes. “You do not like flashy or pointless acts of magic, and you have troubles with bright lights and some noises. I have noticed, you know.”

“And you want an award for it?” Elalas snaps, as her heart speeds up. No. What gave her away? She was being careful. But then, it can be hard to tell what other people will and will not notice, at times. Mana’Din is Dirthamen’s daughter, in the end. Spirits could note and tell her any number of things. And she is more apt to be aware of the strange behaviours of Dreaming-born, and Elalas has confessed her origins to her anyway, in a fit of drunken stupidity. There will be no more pretending that she is not… odd.

She was born that way, though.

She cannot even blame it on the camps.

“No,” Mana’Din says. “I want to know what I can do to make it easier. It has gotten easier for me, but I was flung headlong into the weirdest parts thanks to Dirthamen. It was a sort of sink-or-swim situation there. And I am not certain if it is all the same for you.”

Elalas blinks.

“…What?” she asks, as her heart speeds up just a little. She must have misunderstood that. Must have. Because if Mana’Din is implying what she _thinks_ she is implying, then…

“I know what it is like, to be overwhelmed by things. The magic. The emotions. I have grown better accustomed to a great deal of it, but I still remember how unpleasant it can be,” Mana’Din explains, staring at her earnestly, with worried eyes and a slight frown on her face.

…Elalas is doomed.

A choked sound escapes her, and she drops her face into her hands.

“No,” she says.

Concern spikes through the air, simple enough and soft enough that she can neither mistake it nor recoil from it. There is a soft splashing sound, as Mana’Din moves closer. But stops short of coming _too_ close. The other woman gestures, hand breaking the surface of the water and then dipping down beneath it again.

“No what?” she wonders. “Please, Elalas. What is the matter? What can I do?”

Oh, gods, help her.

She looks away from her hand. Looks at that kind, lovely face. Why does it have to belong to one of _them?_

“I cannot stop _liking_ you,” she admits, through clenched teeth, infuriated and lost and frustrated with her own foolishness. She has seen what happens when slaves fancy themselves in love with their overseers. When they dream of winning favour from those who hold their leashes. When they mistake their own internal desperation to exert some control over those who hold their lives in their hands as some kind of affection. When really, it is only a way to try and fight. To reach back and curl their fingers around the heart of those who could kill them in an instant.

Mana’Din’s expression softens, further. Gentles, further. Why do they say Mythal is the compassionate one, she wonders? She has seen Mythal. The woman is a storm caught in a dress. Even her kindness is edged like a knife.

Behind her mask, Mana’Din is tenderness incarnate.

“If it helps, I like you too,” she says.

As if they are two wild girls who have stumbled upon one another at some wellspring, and not a heretic imperialist and a former slave in an echoing bath chamber.

Elalas makes another choked sound, and thinks about kissing her. Like she would, if they were just those girls. If she could not see the manacle scars on her own wrists. She thinks about moving through the water, and framing Mana’Din’s face with her hands. Pressing flush to her, and sealing their lips together. Probing and tentative at first. Soft little nibbles and long, sweeping strokes of her tongue. She thinks about sliding her hands around her, and clasping the shapely curve of her backside. Pressing her up against the side of the bath, and exploring her properly. Swallowing her every gasp and moan.

She sinks her flaming face back into her hands.

“That _does not help!”_ she hisses. “Do you know how foolish it is of me to like you?”

“Yes,” Mana’Din says.

Elalas wishes, then, that the other woman would just reach over. That she would brush her cheek. Touch her shoulder. Caress a hand over her hip, below the water. That she would make _some_ overture, and yet, she knows in her bones that Mana’Din will not. That Mana’Din will never make any such overture to someone in her service, because there is no way for them to refuse. For years and years, Elalas has seen her act and react, and she has learned this. Despite all her best efforts not to.

Mana’Din does not abuse her power.

It is what turns the simple spark of attraction into something much more persistent, and impossible to abandon.

“Shall I go?” Mana’Din asks.

“Fuck,” Elalas says, and reaches over, the water splashing as she cups the other woman’s face with her hand and kisses her like her life depends upon it.

A startled gasp is her answer, and all at once it occurs to her that Mana’Din might not have expected that. At all. That all of this has been going on in her own mind. That there are probably protocols and courtesies and things that these lofty elves observe, and make rituals of. Emotional cues and steps and other such barriers to make it seem like they do not simply take whatever they want, when that is by far what most of them do.

Mana’Din’s mouth is slack and her eyes are wide, and Elalas drops her hand and moves to step back, her heart hammering fit to burst from her chest. She kissed her. Gods. She kissed her soft, wet lips, and she can still feel them on her own. The brush of bare skin against hers. Smooth beneath the water.

What does she do? How does she fix it?

Mana’Din slides a hand around her, palm resting at her lower back, and leans in, and kisses her in return.

“Elalas,” she says, wondering, breathy, hitching towards the end. And there is loneliness in her, Elalas feels. There are other things less ably defined, but that loneliness is something she recognizes. It is like her own. Not absolute, but enduring. Long and painful, to spend so many years without really being known. Being seen.

What did her monstrous kin do to their youngest, she wonders? What dark places did they drag her through, that she came out the other side like this? As broken as those they caged and chained and bound?

Elalas leans back in, and slips her arms around her again. Rests her marked forehead to Mana’Din’s bare one. That face had once borne Dirthamen’s markings, she knows. Did they itch the way her own do? Did it hurt, to be treated as a belonging by her own family?

“I am sorry,” Mana’Din says, her grip slackening. Hands moving gently away. “That was inappropriate of me.”

“Of _you?_ I kissed you first,” Elalas points out. Her voice sounds very quiet in the bath chamber.

“You cannot refuse me,” the woman in her arms murmurs. It might be true. But not really for the reasons she thinks. Elalas could refuse this. _Has_ refused it, vociferously and even violently, in the past, to people who ignored her. But she does not _want_ to refuse Mana’Din. She does not _want_ to fight her. Even if they are meant to be enemies, to stand in opposition of one another’s aims. What she wants is to take her hand and kiss the pulse point of her wrist, and make foolish promises, and kidnap her away to verdant fields and quiet groves, and mountain shrines where fruit trees grow in abundance, and wildflowers tangle at their roots. To live on the wind, and fly, and free them both.

“I refused you just yesterday,” is what she says. “When you have ever known me to be reluctant in telling you off?”

“This is different,” Mana’Din insists.

It is.

But even so.

“Let me kiss you again, tyrant,” she asks, and the insult falls like affection from her lips.

Mana’Din shivers.

And pulls back.

Uncertain. Uneasy. Not sure of what she wants, Elalas wonders, or not sure if she should take it? The air atop the bath water feels cold, as the leader swallows, and looks down at it. Her lips pursing, as if to taste recent kisses again. Her tongue darts out over them, before she frowns, and then moves to the side of the bath.

Elalas feels a visceral wrench of disappointment.

But surprisingly… no fear of retribution.

“I am sorry. I have to think,” Mana’Din says. She climbs out of the bath, and Elalas forces herself not to watch, not to see the water cascading off of her. She bites her lip and stares at the windows instead.

“I hope I have not caused offense,” she says.

“Never,” Mana’Din assures her, firmly. The tone has her looking back towards the other woman, as she stands atop the smooth tiles. Like a sculpture, Elalas thinks. A warrior caught on the edge of some unknown battle. Not that they lack for options, metaphorical or otherwise.

They regard one another for a long moment.

“You are beautiful,” Mana’Din says. “And I am a terrible, terrible mess, who has never been wise with my heart.”

“And here I was thinking the same thing,” she ruefully retorts.

The other woman pauses a moment.

Then she turns and gathers up her things, and goes.

In the quiet of the empty bath chamber, Elalas leans against the side, and presses her face back into her hands.

“Fuck,” she says, again.


	5. Thinking of Elalas

Elalas is beautiful.

Of course, many elves are. Beauty is so abundant in the ancient world, in so many different ways, that it is scarcely noticeable in many of them. There is the austere, nigh-overwhelming sort of beauty that Sylaise seeks to cultivate. But there is also, in spite of it, plenty of the more divergent varieties. Beauties who are artful, sweeping, and elegant. Beauties who are solid, steady, and kind. Beauties who are delicate and beauties who are resilient. Soft and sharp. Flexible and unyielding.

The last time Mana’Din truly thought about beauty, she was in the high-walled chamber of out of Sylaise’s art theatres. A room of impressions, used by her most favoured artisans to help envision their creations, in surrealistic representations that were often difficult to decipher. But that was the point. The images were meant to give one inspiration to build upon, to reflect on their inner selves from new angles. To puzzle over.

She remembers…

A pale hand, fleck with soft scatterings of discolouration. Like the markings of paint or plaster. Reaching through crystal glass, and pressing against it. The ceiling had turned blue-grey, and she had heard footsteps. Soft and steady, treading a path across a bare floor; as of someone slowly pacing whilst lost in thought. The scent of parchment and of rain, wet paint and old books. The centerpiece in the middle of the room had shifted, abstract but still recognizable as the features of some face or another; angular, dusted with soft freckles. Lips curling in the faintest hint of a smile, as if in spite of themselves.

She had never gone back into that chamber again.

But it had been beautiful.

Elalas is beautiful. She notes it, but, at first, only in the distant fashion of aesthetics. The woman has warm skin and lovely cheekbones, eyes that seem mundane unless she turns towards the light, and then the colour catches in her irises and they _shine._ She has dark freckles, here and there. Nomadic little clusters that sneak around the edges of her hairline, the backs of her hands, and the tops of her breasts. Like constellations. She is thin, the first time Lavellan meets her, clad in threadbare clothes, and all the scars on her wrists and arms and ankles are fully visible. Discoloured lines, paler than the rest. But if there is ugliness in them, it’s only in what they reflect on the world around them.

As time passes, though, Elalas fills out into a healthier frame. She goes from threadbare rags to sturdier clothes, well-made and often surprisingly decorative, in tiny little ways. Lace at the edges of her sleeves. Whorls and unfamiliar – but consistent – patterns, etched into her leather gear. Soft fur on her hoods, and braided necklaces. Mana’Din is entranced. It is not quite the same, but, it is _familiar._ Familiar to the oldest parts of her.

Elalas looks like a keeper. Like _clan._

It is hard to think about. But still, at first, Lavellan attributes that to why her gaze wants to linger on the other woman so much. Tracing her movements whenever she’s around. Granting itself to her fully if she walks into a room. She knows it’s a bit disquieting for her advisor, having the full focus of an evanuris directly upon her whenever she’s around, and she tries to reign it in. But the impulse is persistent.

It is midway through a meeting, as she listens to reports on grain stores in the outlying settlements, and slowly traces Elalas constellation freckles down to the dip in the front of her shirt, and the slightest, visible curve of her breast, that she clues in to herself. To the warm rush she feels whenever the other woman sits next to her. To just precisely _where_ her eyes tend to roam.

It isn’t always over her _embroidery,_ is it?

“Oh,” she says.

The report halts, and she earns a few curious glances.

It makes her glad that her mask obscures the general direction of her gaze.

“Is something the matter, my lady?” the manager providing the grain reports asks.

“No, nothing at all,” she assures her. “Please carry on. I just had a thought on resource management, but I will have to consider it more before sharing it, I believe.”

Her face burns.

But the meeting carries on without any more fuss, at least. And she is left to wonder. To ponder. Observe, and think on what – if anything – she should do with this revelation.

Nothing, she concludes at length.

Elalas is beautiful. More than that, she is resilient, and good, and does her best for her people. She builds shrines, and Mana’Din visits them, sometimes, when the other woman is not there. Goes through rituals she has half forgotten, for gods she had forsaken; for a culture that is still written into the roots of her, that ties back further than she thought. Things she believed to be corruptions and lies are remade again, in the shapes of Elalas’ shrines. In her words to deities older than the evanuris. To stories that somehow passed from the days before Arlathan, to the days after.

She loves this woman, she thinks. She cannot help but love her. She wants to reach out to her, to say, _no, I am not one of them._ To tell her about her clan, about her long-ago past. About the place she comes from, that seems so like and unlike the place which Elalas comes from. And yet, she can’t. She knows she can’t. Will or not, she is Mana’Din, now. She _is_ ‘one of them’, now. Elalas life is in her hands, and both of them are well aware of that. There’s nothing she can ask for, that Elalas wouldn’t be obliged to give.

Nothing can come of it.

But even so, she leaves flowers at Elalas’ shrines.

Flowers and charms, and tiny gifts wrapped in small parcels. Simple things. Nothing opulent or extravagant. She braids bracelets, and bakes little round pies, and carves tiny jackals and ravens and owls. Wooden whistles and seashell charms dangling off the edges of scarves. And rocks.

Elalas likes rocks, she discovers.

Whenever the geological reports come in, the other woman is always quick and readily able to assess them. Moreso than almost any other advisor. She knows minerals and crystals and fossils, and how different formations and compositions react to magic. How to identify them, and what they can indicate about the region they’re in. She helps correctly identify two unknown volcanoes in the territory, and Mana’Din notes that sometimes whenever samples come in, one or two of the smaller ones will go missing; sometimes to reappear in discreet places, tucked behind shelves in Elalas’ chamber parlor.

She hardly minds the thefts. But when she puts it all together, she finds herself keeping an eye out for interesting samples herself. Collecting little stones along her various travels throughout the region. Tucking away a few spare crystals when she visits Sylaise in her spring palace, or gathering up a handful of tiny blue river stones from the edges of the ponds inside Dirthamen’s. She finds a marble-sized rock, green-and-gold-flecked, in one of Elgar’nan’s gardens. It sparks when she taps a nail against it.

She leaves it at Elalas’ Shrine of the Sun – a small little station tucked away, near what is swiftly becoming her capital city – and when she comes back a month later, she finds that it has been carefully smoothed to a perfect, round shape, and set into one of the shrine’s carvings.

Reaching out, she runs a hand along the edges of it.

It makes her feel…

She has no good words, for what it makes her feel.

But it’s a lot like how she feels when Elalas kisses her, the first time. And she wants to feel it again. Wants to feel it, more and more, and press it back, into the soft warmth of the other woman’s skin. She is so lonely, she knows. Not alone, not without people or love or support, but even so. It’s different, with Elalas. It soothes an ache in her that she had long thought scarred over, but that had maybe, instead, just been left to bleed out into the void. This beautiful, brilliant woman who is so like so many thinks which Lavellan has lost, and yet, is not any of them.

But she cannot give in.

She is Mana’Din. She is an evanuris. She is keeping secrets, and she knows all of that, and Elalas _doesn’t._

And she won’t _do_ that. Not to her. Not like…

No matter how lonely she is, no matter how beautiful Elalas is. It can be enough, she thinks, just to have something. Whatever it is that they have. Elalas is still half convinced she’s an evil dictator, and in many respects, isn’t wrong. She’ll never make a real move, not again. And Lavellan won’t, either. Perhaps it’s better that way. Lingering in the shadows of ‘what if?’

She goes to the Moon Shrine, after that kiss. It is one of the more beautiful locations that Elalas has chosen. A rocky, shallow cave facing a small waterfall, that rushes past the exposed roots of ancient and sheltering willow trees. The soft, dangling branches are lined with dark leaves that flutter and brush against her arms, gentle as kisses themselves. But they are not close enough to the shrine to block out the light of the stars or the moon, and in the night’s brightness, she takes off her mask and sits in the glow.

There is a man in her memory, and she loves him.

There is a wolf in her dreams, and she loves him, too.

And there is a woman, who builds shrines. Who stands at her side, and tries to hate her, and can’t.

She loves her.

Lavellan closes her eyes, and wonders if the world will ever be saved enough for her love to mean more than just hurt.


	6. Training

Mana’Din trains.

A lot.

It takes Elalas quite a while to realize this, that sometimes when she assumes the woman is in shady secret meetings or consulting with far-flung spirits or, possibly, just sitting in the middle of a room somewhere, gently levitating while she meditates, she is, in fact, _destroying_ things with her bare hands.

This is alarming. Obviously. Obviously alarming. She knows full well that Mana’Din can fight, of course, and has seen her prowess with a blade and shield – and her willingness to fling herself headlong into danger. But it is one thing to _know_ that, and it is another to walk into the basement of the nicest estate in one of the cities that is being restored, and see Mana’Din…

Well…

_Moving._

Mana’Din is dressed in her armour, but she has foregone the flowing folds of her clothing. Her outline is minimal and compact, her biceps bare, muscles visibly straining as the contests with practice decoys and summoned barriers and no less than two Spirits of Vigor. Her blade is a gleaming band of light, reflecting down from the small, narrow windows in the room. It falls in soft shafts all around her, so that when she moves it gleams over her armour, and the pale surface of her mask, and the edges of her shield. The droplets of sweat on her bared skin.

She breaks one of the target dummies in half, and Elalas _should_ be frightened, seeing the woman use that kind of strength so close by. When she might get angry at being interrupted. When many others in such positions of authority show no hesitance in lashing out. And yet, the bolt of warmth that streaks clean through her isn’t fear at all.

Her mouth goes dry.

She turns and walks back out the way she came, and takes a full three hours to remember what she even initially went down there for.

That’s the first time she realizes that training is a frequent task for Mana’Din.

And then it seems like the fates have decided she cannot escape it. She goes to forward a message, and she happens upon Mana’Din in her rooms, going through the motions of some stretching exercises in the early morning light. She seeks out the woman to try and counter some order or another that she disagrees with, and finds her in a square garden that is really more dirt than garden, locked in mock combat with a handful of spirit opponents. She sets out to consult over a report with the leader in the midst of city renovations, and discovers her doing push-ups.

One-handed.

“Want to sit on my back?” Mana’Din offers.

“No!” Elalas snaps, and is very glad when it actually comes out ‘no’ and not ‘yes’.

Mana’Din switches hands, with a jaunty little jump of her muscles, and it is all Elalas can do not to scream because it would be so easy to ignore this if the woman was just brutish and intolerable, and instead she has to go around being _nice_ all the time. Nice and gentle and fully capable of picking Elalas up and, well, it is not as if Elalas could not pick _her_ up either, but she probably could not do that and still fight a dozen soldiers off at the same time.

Mana’Din… might actually be able to do that.

Possibly.

Probably.

 _And she would,_  an insidious little voice in the back of her mind whispers. _She probably would protect you._   _She probably would hold you, and fight people off, and keep you safe._

“What did you need, then?” Mana’Din asks, and she sounds _amused._

“The soil in… there… not, bad…” Elalas pauses, and closes her eyes. She breathes in through her nose and lets herself click her tongue a few times. Mana’Din does not ever mention it, nor seem to care about it much. “The soil in the region you were hoping to convert to farmland, the valley south of the city’s main eluvian, is no good. The trap wards in the region have scarred it to severely. In a few years, we might be able to get some crops in it that will help replenish it, but nothing sustainable will turn up for decades without a half dozen fertility rituals.”

“We can manage a half dozen fertility rituals,” Mana’Din says, and Elalas’ tongue ties itself into knots, as her mind helpfully decides to illustrate said rituals – which generally involve a lot of sex – as featuring both herself and Mana’Din. And not the… the volunteers who usually…

She mouths a curse, and sucks in a long breath through her nose.

“That should speed us up by a few years. Even so, we will have to find another means of supplying the city’s immediate needs,” she says. “Discontentment is high and subversive activities have been growing, but with a trend more towards supporting your relatives’ methods than protesting them, here.”

This place makes her uncomfortable. Most of the residents are former servants of Falon’Din. Some of them used to be fairly high-ranking, in fact. The city’s eluvian was deliberately broken by the city managers when Falon’Din began calling for sacrifices. Some of them resent not being automatically promoted to the upper echelons of Mana’Din’s advisors, in light of their seniority to such things. Even more of them resent the renovations to the city’s infrastructure, since none of it has been built to operate to Mana’Din’s minimum ethical standards.

Most of them do not care for Elalas. Nor anyone from the camps.

“I will check progress on the new road,” Mana’Din decides, standing up at last. There is a thin sheen of sweat on the visible skin of her arms. Elalas had caught her at the tail end of her workout, then. Again. “The villages are managing to produce a surplus. If we can get a stable ground route established for distribution of fresh goods to the city, that should ease things.”

“Might ease them more if you could convince the ‘managers’ to stop _feasting,”_ she grumbles.

“They have no idea how to ration themselves. That much has become apparent,” Mana’Din agrees. This is not a problem for most of the other cities and settlements, where the population is largely low-ranking survivors from Falon’Din’s outlying regions, or people from the camps. Both groups know how to make do with limited supplies. The high-ranking elves in _this_ place cannot quite seem to fathom that concept that food is not unlimited, though.

“Laws that limit consumption and food waste will not be popular,” Elalas notes.

She hopes Mana’Din makes them anyway.

“If I was angling for easy popularity, I really would be going about things in entirely the wrong way, wouldn’t I?” Mana’Din says. “Still. I am almost tempted to let them run themselves straight into a crisis. We could bail them out, come to it, and it might be a more effective demonstration of the consequences of what they are doing.”

Elalas… does not hate that idea. Letting the foolish hoist themselves on their own petards is definitely a notion with some appeal.

“On the other hand, it would be the servants who suffered first and foremost,” Mana’Din notes, letting out a breath. And that is true, too. And it is one more thing that Elalas cannot help but find compelling in the other woman. That she sometimes seems so very inclined to let the haughty burn their hands in reaching for the fire; but she never does it where it might rebound onto someone lower in standing. 

“I do not think it would help your popularity a great deal with, come to it,” she points out.

“So it goes,” Mana’Din agrees.

The evening sky behind her is golden and pink. It softens her outline, makes it more obvious that there is a living, breathing person behind the mask.

Her fingers itch.

She clasps them together.

“I will be setting out in the morning, to take my scheduled leave from duties,” she feels compelled to remind the other woman, for some reason. In fact she will be taking less of a vacation, and more of a trip to one of the outposts where a certain faction of would-be revolutionaries is meeting. But that goes unsaid.

“I will miss you,” Mana’Din tells her.

Elalas scoffs, and quickly strides off.

“Just do not let the city turn on you over fancy cakes and wine,” she snaps.

Not that Mana’Din could not fight off most of the city, come to it. She probably would not even _have_ to fight off most of the city, she could just pin the most dangerous rebels to the ground and the rest would remember that she was a tyrannical, militant overlord for a _reason,_ and drop their weapons.

The woman is wholly terrifying.

And if she has to firmly remind certain parts of her anatomy of that, then she _will_.


	7. First Time (NSFW)

In the end, when they fall into one another’s arms in earnest, it happens in Elalas’ own bedchambers.

It is preferable to Mana’Din’s chambers, she thinks.

Less liable to be interrupted by assassins, for one.

But the moment comes after long hours of conversation and hesitation. Odd secrets and stories that she is not certain what to make of, except that in the end it all breaks under careful touches and impetuous kisses, and longing so visceral it shatters through them both.

She is not even certain who undresses whom, except that she remembers taking off Mana’Din’s last layer. Running her hands over the bared skin, and then her lips. Drawing her towards the bed, and climbing atop her to kiss and caress. To trail tentative fingers across soft breasts and firm muscle, and kiss, and lick, and kiss again, until it feels like she is almost drunk from it.

And then Mana’Din starts urging her to move.

It takes her a moment to realize what it is she wants her to do, as the other woman coaxes her upwards, and then when she does, she feels her whole body light up like a struck match. She hesitates, and the other woman pauses, pressing a kiss to her thigh and giving her a concerned look.

“Alright?” she asks.

“You want me to…” she hesitates, shivering at the warm lips and breath against her skin, as she crouches over Mana’Din, nearly sitting on her face. But the other woman just smiles, running her hands across her legs, and hums.

“Only if you are willing,” she says.

Elalas does not know what to make of it. She almost turns down the offer, just because it seems… what? Uncomfortable, perhaps? Though, not for her. Perhaps more like a trick. A trap. Something with some hidden catch, lurking in the wings. Mana’Din waits, patient, stroking Elalas’ thighs, and just when it seems like she might suggest something else, Elalas makes up her mind and moves closer.

She settles into place. Mana’Din’s hands curve across her backside, helping arrange her, as Elalas rests her most sensitive parts atop her mouth and nose. Her lovely features press soundly against stimulated flesh, and yet, at first it is simply the _knowledge_ of how close they are pressed, of whose mouth is against her, that has her trembling a little. Then Mana’Din’s lips move, and her tongue scorches across her, and a shocked gasp flies out of her. Gravity does half the work as she simply presses down, and Mana’Din does the rest, devouring her from below until her hips are stuttering, and the muscles of her thighs are trembling. The sheer intensity of it is enthralling. Elalas leans forward after a while, no longer capable of keeping herself upright, and her hands clench into the sheets as her thighs clench around Mana’Din’s head, and somehow Mana’Din only pulls her closer. Presses tighter, tongue sliding deeper, gripping Elalas’ backside firmly.

She comes with a choked gasp. Stars in her eyes and in her skin. Trembling with the rush of it.

Mana’Din eases up when she does, offering a few more languid motions of her tongue before flipping her over.

Elalas lays back, and is lost for a few moments; drifting through the aftershocks, breaths panting as her lover licks and kisses her almost lazily; trailing shining marks across her thighs, and mouthing idly at her here and there, provocative and affectionate in one. The sight of her there, settled so pleasantly, makes Elalas shiver.

“Beautiful,” Mana’Din tells her. Which is baffling. Elalas is many things, but she is no great beauty, and never has been. Not like the lady still perched between her thighs, nuzzling at her in affectionate contentment; even with the spark of arousal still sharp in her aura. Glinting in her eyes.

She should return the favour, she thinks. And yet she cannot quite muster up the will to move, and Mana’Din certainly does not seem inclined to hurry her. The pleasure of her soft kisses mingles with the tingling aftershocks still echoing through her flesh, dancing together until she can no longer tell which is which, and each movement of that mouth against her makes her skin tingle, coiling up her stomach, as if trying to escape through her exhalations. But it only grows, instead.

She bites out a curse.

“Are you not done with that yet?” But there is a waver in her voice, and the softness of Mana’Din’s touch, the gentle affection, might be doing even more to her than the steady motions of her tongue.

“I like your pleasure,” Mana’Din tells her. Confiding and sweet. Her hands run down her thighs, and she kisses her abdomen; and then trails her mouth slowly up towards her navel. Elalas shifts a bit, and possibly squirms a little, letting out another curse at the loss of that mouth against other parts of her. Not that it’s a poor trade-off, really, as Mana’Din climbs her way up her, bringing her hands to her breasts and her mouth to her neck, capturing one of Elalas’ legs between her thighs and rocking against it. Running her thumb across the sensitive, pebbled skin of her nipple, as her own breasts press between them.

Elalas lifts her thigh a little more firmly against Mana’Din, and the heat in her changes. Unfurling to something a bit more fierce. A bit more covetous. She has Mana’Din in her arms, and there is something in her that crows in triumph, in the midst of all this. That wants to just pick the other woman up and carry her away, keep her safe and close, kiss her relentlessly, and caress her until the bitter grief in both of them is gone.

It is a disaster, she thinks. She has never been able to keep anyone she cared for. Not once. She can lift things well enough, but she is not a strong person. Lights and sounds overwhelm her. The very world itself is too much, and Mana’Din is trapped up in the worst of it.

But still.

 _Take her and run,_ a part of her whispers. _Run before they catch up with you._

Elalas rolls her over, instead, and pins her a bit. Presses a flurry of kisses to her lover’s sweet lips. Grinds her against her thigh, and then slips her hand against her instead. She has never been much good at any of the magics for this kind of thing. She almost regrets that, but then, Mana’Din has not used any so far, either. Perhaps it does not matter so much, then.

She draws her lips down Mana’Din’s collarbone, and works her fingers inside of her. Rubs a thumb against her, searchingly, and tries a few different angles before she presses down a certain way and Mana’Din’s hips shift pointedly towards her. Elalas’ lover bites her lip and clutches her shoulders, and she thinks this woman might actually be a goddess of some kind. Just a little bit. Just in small, stolen moments. Like this one.

She repeats the motion, and then again, listening to Mana’Din’s hitching breaths until she cannot take it anymore, and leans in to capture her lips. Works her free hand behind Mana’Din’s neck, clutching her close and pressing more firmly into the warm heat between her legs. Moving more quickly, drawing her lover up, lost in the simplicity of the rocking motions, and the mouth that keeps falling away from hers to breathe in hitching mouthfuls of air.

Then she slows down. Moving with careful, teasing lightness, and then nearly stopping altogether. Mana’Din’s grip on her tightens, her hips bucking towards her.

Elalas waits. For a moment, she is not sure what for. Her fingers toy only lightly with Mana’Din, and her lover pants and strains towards her, clearly on the precipice of release. And then she realizes she is waiting for her to crack. For her to command, to demand. For her to tell Elalas to lie down on the ground so she can return her earlier favour. For her to hit her. Berate her. Lose her patience with her.

Show _some_ sign of the demanding, entitled person that _must_ be in there.

“Beloved,” Mana’Din says, chest heaving. “Please.”

Elalas is the one who cracks, then.

She lets out a curse as presses more firmly again, and steals another kiss from Mana’Din. And another. Something in her chest smashes open, and the air around her banks with a wash of painful affection. That was unbefitting of her, she thinks. Unbefitting to test… if she had doubts, she should not have taken on such a lover, she knows her nanae would have said… but it has been so long. It has been so long, and so many years since she had someone who would not hurt her. Even the other slaves could, and would, take the opportunity to put themselves up above _someone_ , if only for a moment. If only because the desperation could make it seem to enticing to become the abuser, and pray that might free them from abuse. Even _she_ would fall prey to such thinking.

Had fallen prey to it. On days that curled her gut to recall.

Mana’Din clutches her as she comes, gasping, and she presses her lips tight against her temple, and shuts her eyes tight. Trembling along with her, until her lover works her more fully into her arms again. She tangles their legs together, and holds Elalas to her breast. She kisses her forehead, with that soft, sweet mouth, and lets out a long, long breath. The air around her is near drunk with contentment.

“Alright?” her lover asks.

Elalas does not know how to answer that. She keeps her eyes shut, and settles for a nod.

“It is alright not to be alright, you know,” Mana’Din assures her, lifting a hand, and brushing her fingers through her hair..

Again, Elalas does not know what to say to that. Her lips press into the nearest patch of skin they can reach, as Mana’Din caresses her, and contentment veers steadily towards concern. Pressed so close she can feel both of their heartbeats thrumming. Their chests rising and falling. After a still moment, she catches Mana’Din’s hand, and threads their fingers together, and clicks her tongue to settle herself more fully.

“This was good,” she decides.

She smiles.

Mana’Din smiles tentatively back.


	8. Workout Kisses

The first time Mana’Din kisses her during a workout, she is still wearing the mask.

Elalas blinks, as one moment she is… not ogling, no, but… _looking at_  Mana’Din’s arms as she pulls herself up and down a suspended pole, while her magic coils subtly around her, buffeting a few tiny glass beads; sending them through looping patterns, as Mana’Din uses one arm to lift her body up, and then lower it down again.

Halfway through the workout, she switches. Elalas moves closer, staring at the strain in her muscles; she explains about the situation with the rogue goats in the village just slightly to the east of Daran, and for some reason, the story amuses Mana’Din exceptionally.

“What is so funny?” she wonders.

Mana’Din lowers her way back down, and leans forwards just a bit; and the smooth lips of her mask press against Elalas’ own.

Her heart skips a beat.

“Did you just kiss me with the mask on?” she demands, frowning, and she finds herself unaccountably flustered by the bizarre little gesture.

“Want me to take it off?” Mana’Din suggests.

“No!” she snaps.

Her illustrious leader chuckles, just a little, and carries on with her workout.

Elalas doesn’t actually find out what is supposed to be so funny. She leaves, exasperated; and somehow when she gets Mana’Din alone again the next day, and there are kisses without masks and hands slipping under her tunic, a warm thigh trapped between her legs, she cannot quite remember to ask.

 

The second time Mana’Din kisses her during a workout, she is chasing after targets in the overgrown wilds beyond the city’s walls. Elalas tracks her down, dispelling some of her magical orbs to get her attention. Mana’Din is up on the edge of a steep hill when she spots her.

The woman jumps down, right when Elalas notices one of the larger targets moving towards her. Before she can dispel it, though, the other woman rushes her, scooping her up in her arms. Her heart leaps into her throat and she forgets how to breathe for half a second, as the shimmering, orb-shaped target is deflected away.

Mana’Din’s mask parts, the bottom half sliding away to reveal a grin on her lips.

“That would have stung, if it had hit,” she says.

“I would have handled it,” Elalas replies, and realizes all at once that she is clutching the other woman’s collar. It was just a simple little orb. Though, she supposes, that was hardly what has gotten her heart racing.

Mana’Din replies by bending in and placing a quick, startling little peck on the bridge of her nose.

“Put me down,” she insists, as her insides squirm.

Mana’Din does; and has the grace not to even mention her wobbly knees, either.

 

The third time, Mana’Din isn’t wearing her mask at all.

It is in the early morning - barely past dawn, in fact - and Elalas has spent the night unable to sleep. Lost to her nightmares, to fears and a lingering feeling that she could not shake; that there were eyes following her, everywhere. She spent half the night checking the walls for any kind of listening or scrying enchantments, and then the other half of the night moving out of her room because she could not find any.

She relocated her things to another room halfway across the estate, in one of the unfinished wings. And then it occurs to her that she will need to actually have permission to make it official and not end up with the servants moving all of her belongings back or to somewhere more ‘appropriate for her station’, so she goes to Mana’Din’s chambers.

It is only once she is _in_  them that it occurs to her how late - or early - it is.

But Mana’Din is awake. She is in the middle of her floor, in fact, doing push-ups atop a simple black-and-grey rug, clad in a loose shirt and calf-length leggings. Her face is bare, and her gaze is distant; body seemingly moving of its own accord, as her mind is a thousand miles away.

Elalas wonders if _she_  slept last night, either.

She watches the other woman move for a few moments, and then walks closer. Remembers the offer she once got, to sit on her back.

“Something the matter?” Mana’Din asks, though her movements do not falter, and her expression barely shifts.

“…I moved rooms. There was nothing wrong with my other one, I just… could not sleep there anymore,” she admits.

“Alright,” Mana’Din says. “You are welcome to come here, too. If you need to.”

“And help keep watch for assassins?” she suggests. Mana’Din’s rooms only feel safe to her when Mana’Din is in them. Otherwise, she tends to think of them as one of the most dangerous places in any given estate.

But still. When she _is_  in them…

Elalas swallows, and tries not to think of how safe that feels. Of how a part of her wants to just crawl down, right now, and wedge her way between Mana’Din’s arms. Resting there in what is probably one of the safest places in the territory. 

She scoffs at herself, and wonders what the other woman would do.

And then she wonders about it in earnest.

It is a probably a testament to how tired she is that she actually finds herself moving onto the floor. She has not slept well these past few weeks, though. Too much on edge. Nothing has really _happened,_  but maybe that is the problem. She keeps waiting for the next disaster, and the longer it takes in coming, the more anxious the whole thing makes her.

Mana’Din pushes up, and she squeezes her way beneath her.

The other woman’s reaction, as it happens, is to blink. And then smile gently at her. And then lower herself back down, and press her lips to Elalas’ cheek.

She does a few more repetitions like that - push up, and smile at Elalas. Come down, and kiss her lips, or her nose, or nuzzle at the side of her face. It is not the most uniform of workouts, but Elalas feels something in her unclenching, relaxing, at the proximity and warmth and affection, and the display of a strength that she trust not to be used against her.

Eventually, she lets out a long sigh, and then the whole thing just degenerates into cuddling. Mana’Din lowers herself onto her, resting more of her weight against her, and Elalas slides her hands around to her back and holds her there. She breathes in the scent of her, closing her eyes and feeling, unfittingly, like she could sleep now.

Here.

With Mana’Din for a blanket.

And Mana’Din might feel the same way, she realizes, as a fuzzy sort of contentment settles over the both of them; and she knows it’s not just herself who is causing it.

She tilts her head, and presses her lips to Mana’Din’s cheek. 

Maybe she _will_  come back tonight.


End file.
